Sputnik Caledonia

by Andrew Crumey

  Harvey stared into his glass. ‘No thanks.’

  ‘What? I offer you a lovely woman, free of charge, no strings, and you refuse? What are you talking about?’

  Beth was about to leave the table; Davis swiftly reached out and held her arm. ‘Wait,’ he said, and she stayed. There was a new note of hardness in his voice. ‘Go with her, Harvey.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  A half-hearted flutter of applause greeted the ending of a song. ‘I don’t care if you fucking want to, man, it’s an order. Screw her good and hard.’

  Both Robert and Harvey had their eyes lowered in fear and shame. ‘It’s a strange order,’ Harvey murmured.

  ‘Strange? You think fucking a woman’s strange? What are you, some kind of pervert?’ As Davis’s voice rose, Robert looked up to see the vein that had begun bulging on the commissioner’s forehead; his grip on Beth had tightened and she was staring helplessly over her shoulder towards the doorman who watched everything from the foot of the stairs but appeared unwilling or unable to come and intervene. At last Davis released Beth, but his nod told her she must stay and wait for further orders. Another dismal ballad started up on stage. ‘Well, Harvey?’ he said. ‘Are you a homo?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘So what’s up? Afraid your girlfriend will find out?’

  ‘I don’t have one, sir.’

  Davis looked mystified. ‘What earthly reason can there be for refusing this lovely, willing woman? She’s trying to earn a living and you’re wasting her time. You needn’t be afraid of catching anything – the standards here are very high and all the girls get regular checks.’

  ‘It’s wrong.’

  ‘What? Whoring is wrong? Beth, do you enjoy working here?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said.

  ‘There you are, Harvey, she loves it, so what’s all the fake moralizing for?’ He paused. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve got religious principles.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You’d be slung out of the forces if you did. Or maybe you don’t fancy her, is that it? Then shut your eyes and think of someone else. You’re supposed to be a professionally trained killer; if your commander ordered you to stick a bayonet in a baby, that’s what you’d do. I order you to stick a hard cock in a whore and you go all limp on me.’

  ‘With the greatest respect, sir,’ said Harvey, ‘you’re not my commanding officer …’ He tailed off as he saw Davis’s face. It was the face of someone whose power was self-appointed, illegitimate and absolute; someone who could have Harvey beaten up in a soundproof interrogation room and then shot as a spy.

  Davis spoke quietly. ‘You’re the luckiest fucker in the world, Harvey, do you know that? If you’d said that to me anywhere else but here you’d be a dead man, and I’d see to it that your whore mother got kicked out of her wheelchair and down the stairs. Do you know about her and the schoolteacher?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Her and Mr Wilson, did she never tell you?’ Robert was almost as stunned by this latest provocation as Harvey was. ‘Now get up off that pink arse of yours and let this woman show you what life’s about. Stick your dirty little thing wherever it’ll fit. And Beth, tell me all about it afterwards.’

  Harvey rose from his seat as if he were being taken away for torture. Beth forced a smile. ‘Come on, soldier, I’ll look after you.’ There was something painfully maternal about the way she took charge of him, leading him across the bar and through the yellow door.

  ‘I do like to spread a little happiness in the world,’ Davis said to his last remaining companion, moving closer and sliding his half-filled wine glass across the table. ‘Got anything to tell?’

  ‘About Kaupff?’

  ‘Whatever you can give me. I’m all ears.’

  Robert swallowed a mouthful of beer. ‘The Franks really think the boy’s death was an accident. You won’t get any more from them.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Davis pondered the situation while the singer raised an arm in synchrony with her voice, though it was not the band to which both men gave their attention, but the door. ‘I’m sure the Franks will have more to say once you get to know them better.’

  Robert felt he knew them too well already. He could easily imagine the three of them sitting at a table here; Miriam scowling while Arthur downed litres of German beer; Dot clutching her handbag and saying she needed to Blue Cat off to the loo.

  The door opened and it was Dora who reappeared.

  ‘Our great writer must have found another friend,’ Davis observed. ‘Wanda isn’t the best-looking tart here, I suppose.’ He turned to Robert. ‘You know you’ll be rewarded, don’t you? Give me a little and you get a little. Give me more and the prize gets better. Money, privileges, power, sex – every man wants something different, but we have everything here. You might even be allowed to leave.’

  ‘You mean the others … ?’

  Davis smiled. ‘What do you think? Would we let an idiot like Forsyth or that pansy Harvey go back outside and spill the beans? Already they know far too much. But let’s not darken the mood – don’t you love the atmosphere here? A secret bar in a secret town – and on the other side of that door another secret. A world within a world. Who do you want to fuck, Coyle?’

  ‘Wanda,’ he said at once.

  ‘Wanda?’ Davis rubbed his chin. ‘Following in the giant’s wake, so to speak.’

  ‘She’s the one I want.’

  Dora was at Vine’s table, taking orders from the night school. Davis waved across to the professor to make her turn; and when she did, Davis pointed at Robert, at the door, and she understood at once. Someone else would have to serve the scientists.

  ‘She’s all yours,’ Davis said as Robert got up to follow her, making his way past Vine’s table while the band began the next love song in their list.

  ‘Come and join us afterwards,’ Vine called to him above the music. Robert nodded, then went to the door being held open for him.

  13

  Dora silently beckoned him through, out of the noisy bluelit bar and into a corridor, illuminated by red neon tubes, whose featureless walls, painted matt black, were interrupted at regular intervals on both sides by small windows at head height. Robert paused to look through one and saw a naked woman sitting on a chair. It was like a miniature bedroom sparsely furnished with the essentials of the trade, which included a sink and bidet, some items of lurid lingerie hanging on a rail, a table strewn with magazines and a whip. The girl was alone and appeared oblivious to her exposure, nonchalantly examining the big toe of her right foot, raised by the practical but ungainly crossing of one leg over the other. Her belly sagged above a dark bush of pubic hair.

  ‘That’s Shelly,’ said Dora. ‘Would you rather have her?’ Perhaps Shelly heard, because she raised her face and stared at Robert through the window. Shelly looked blankly at him, uncrossed her legs and spread her heels on the floor, then began to stroke her bush in what seemed like a standard and formalized invitation. Robert turned away, too embarrassed to look further. ‘Come on,’ said Dora, leading him along the corridor. Each window had a coarse pink curtain inside; some were open, revealing the room’s solitary occupant, skimpily dressed or wholly naked, while other curtains were drawn closed to hide girls at work with their clients. In the space of only a few metres Robert saw as many as twenty prostitutes: women with the ample figures of tribal fertility icons; flat-chested girls so thin you could count their bones. Blondes, brunettes, redheads; breasts standing proud like small-nosed puppies, sagging like a basset hound’s ears; buttocks smooth as butter or puckered like lemon peel. There were girls who looked as though they might still be at school, women old enough to be his mother. And as well as these, there were the equal number unseen behind closed curtains, reminding Robert of the corridor in the College where everyone was ‘in’ or ‘out’.

  Dora stopped at one of the curtained windows and fumbled with something brought from her pocket which proved to be a small key. Somewhere beneath the window th
ere was a lock, too inconspicuous for Robert to have noticed in the dark, and with a quick twist and push she opened the handleless door in which the window was set; a door – like all the others on the corridor – rendered invisible through being perfectly flush with the matching black wall. ‘Come,’ she said. The light was already on, a white bulb that seemed unduly bright, more geared to efficiency than atmosphere. She closed the door behind him, sealing it with an iron security bar made to withstand the most determined of drunk intruders, and then with her back to him began to pull her white top up to her shoulders, exposing the black bra she wore beneath.

  ‘Stop!’ he said.

  She turned, her clothing still raised in her hands. ‘Sure, there’s no hurry.’ Covering herself again, she came towards him and reached a firm hand onto his crotch. This morning, in the crowded elevator, Rosalind had brushed her fingers, accidentally or otherwise, against his penis, and the transitory thrill had almost lifted him off his feet. Dora’s hand was as lifeless and functional as the electric light that hurt his eyes.

  ‘I don’t want sex with you, Dora.’

  ‘My name’s Wanda.’

  ‘That’s not what you told me this morning.’

  She moved away from him; her face looked worn. ‘You’ve got a poor memory. I told you that when we’re in the Blue Cat different rules apply. People have new identities here.’

  ‘It’s a charade.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s the only way it can work. The men who fuck me here go home to their wives, then I see them next day in the College and offer them a cup of coffee and a biscuit, and everybody acts like nothing happened. That’s how it is.’ With a single swift action she pulled her top over her head and stood before him in her bra. ‘Let’s get on with it, soldier.’

  ‘I told you, Dora, I don’t want sex.’

  ‘And I told you, my name’s Wanda. How about some sucking?’ Again she reached for his crotch, intending to unzip him. He backed away.

  ‘What will you tell Davis?’ he asked. She looked puzzled. ‘He’ll want to know if we did it.’

  Dora gave a laugh. ‘I’ll say anything you want. I’ll tell him you fucked my brains out.’

  ‘But we don’t have to do it, right?’

  ‘I won’t lie for you, soldier. If I lie, I do it for myself.’ She kicked off her high-heeled shoes, slid her skirt to her knees and stepped out if it. ‘Are you a top or a bottom man?’ she asked coolly. ‘Do you like to see tits first, or cunt?’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re doing this.’

  ‘I’m doing it because we both have to, so we might as well get on with it.’ She pushed him gently back until he sat down on the bed, then she pulled off his boots and began to loosen his trousers. ‘This is my job, it’s how I survive. And you’re a man. You’ve got a thing that has a mind and needs of its own.’ She drew his cock out of his loosened trousers and began stroking it like a mouse. ‘You come in here saying you don’t want to do it, but I’ve heard that before. I’ve had men weep on me, spill their tears on me, tell me their problems, say they only want someone they can pour out their heart to. One man had just buried his wife the previous day. But they all end up fucking me, even the man who lost his wife. They’ve all got this thing that controls them.’ He had gone hard in her hand but was still determined to resist.

  ‘I only came here because I want to talk to you, Dora.’ She put her moist lips over the swollen end of his penis, the most astonishing sensation he had ever known, and for a moment he was unable to do anything except marvel at the pleasure. Then he pushed her clear of his lap. ‘You don’t have to do this. Why can’t we talk?’

  She looked up at him with an expression of pity. ‘You’re wrong,’ she said. ‘We do have to do this. You’re a man with a hard cock and I’m a slave. We don’t have any choice.’

  ‘I want to help you.’

  ‘Help me?’ She laughed mockingly and stood before him with a challenging air. ‘All right, I’ll tell you what to do. Go out there and start a revolution, change the fucking world. You’re a soldier, aren’t you? Get hold of a machine gun and shoot every bastard sitting in that bar, every single one of them. That’d help. Otherwise let me do what I have to do with that stiff cock of yours, because as soon as it pumps its stuff into me you’re not going to feel like talking to me anymore, are you?’ She jabbed his chest to make him lie back on the bed, his legs still dangling on the floor, and pulled his trousers and pants off before removing her own remaining underwear. Then she straddled him, rubbing her crotch against his as she unbuttoned his shirt.

  ‘I can give you money,’ he said. ‘Look in my pocket – they’ve given me lots.’

  ‘Those stupid vouchers? They’re worth nothing to me.’ She was sliding herself over him and he was desperate to have her, just like Davis wanted. She moved away and got off the bed to stand on the floor beside him, looking down at his sweating, panting face. ‘You don’t understand anything at all about this place, do you?’

  ‘What … what do you mean?’

  ‘There’s a very strict rationing system here.’ She turned, and he watched her rump retreat the small distance to the other side of the room where her skirt lay on the floor. She lifted and folded it, bending over the small white cupboard on whose top she placed the garment neatly, displaying her buttocks like the meat the butcher had used this afternoon to tease and taunt a queue of women. She turned again. ‘Your vouchers are no good to me – I can’t buy anything useful with them. But if you aren’t going to run out and start castrating every man in the Installation, there’s one way you really can help me. The daddies who come here, they bring me things. Food mostly. That I can use. I don’t want your talk, soldier, I don’t want you telling me how sorry you feel about me, because I can’t eat talk, I can’t wear talk. Talk doesn’t keep my toes from getting so cold that I cry with pain on my way to the College to hand out biscuits to the men who fuck me. Talk doesn’t stop my belly rumbling. Your talk is as worthless as your book of vouchers. So fine, you don’t want sex with me; in that case get dressed and get out, because I don’t want talk with you. If you want to help me, come back tomorrow with something for my stomach – you’re not rationed and your vouchers could feed me for a month. Then if you want to stick your thing in me it’s up to you. Do it now if you want.’

  He was still painfully aroused, but as he looked at her, propping himself on his elbow on the bed, he saw a human being in need. All the doubt that had been submerged beneath the effects of the drug or the machine in his pillow or whatever it was they had used to brainwash him became focused, like sunlight through a lens, into a small, brilliantly intense spot of burning anger; a white star of indignation. He didn’t have to accept any of this. She must have seen the change in his face; she came back to the bed and knelt on the floor beside him. ‘Life’s not so bad,’ she said. Then she took his rigid penis in her hand and with two or three swift flicks brought business to an end. She got up and fetched a roll of paper towel for him, carefully mopping droplets from the bed and floor while he attended to himself. ‘Feeling better now?’ she asked, going to throw the used towels in the swingbin beside the sink and then washing her hands. He nodded meekly, got up and dressed himself while she did the same. Soon they both looked as if nothing had happened.

  He reached into his trouser pocket and brought out his voucher book. ‘How much do you want?’ he asked, an air of apology in his voice.

  She gently pushed his hand away. ‘Free introductory offer,’ she said. ‘When you come back, bring me a present. Some meat, say. Or chocolate; the real kind, not the horrible fake stuff they foist on the low-category workers. I need a new pair of gloves, too.’ She held up her right hand and extended the fingers which not long before had brought him gratification; they were long, thin and elegant.

  ‘You have beautiful hands,’ he told her.

  ‘They’re the hands of a musician,’ she explained. ‘Nowadays they wash toilets and pull cocks.’ She said it simply, without any
hint of malice, and he took her outstretched fingers in his.

  ‘Why are you here, Dora? What did you do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Absolutely nothing. Maybe I’ll tell you my story when you come back with a present for me – but remember, I’m not a little girl who gets ecstatic over pink ribbons or the smell of roses. I can’t eat ribbons and roses. This is how I survive, and if I live long enough without going mad, I might even make it out of this shithole one day.’

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he said. Then, before she could finish lifting clear the iron bar that blocked the door from intruders, he took her round the waist and kissed her on the lips. It was a long, loving kiss, and she tasted to him like the sweetest thing in the world. He no longer needed artificial courage; here was the sort of woman for whom he could happily risk his life.

  She let go of the bar and pushed him back firmly, staring at him with anger. ‘Never do that again, soldier, do you understand? You can touch me any place you like, stick your thing where you want, as long as you pay. But never kiss me. That’s what people do when they’re in love – and in this place there is no love.’ She opened the door and waved him out of her room. ‘You know the way.’ Then she closed the door, and he heard the iron bar drop back in place. He stood waiting for a moment, but nothing happened; he wondered why she had become so hostile. Eventually the curtain swished open; he glimpsed her arm at it but not her face, and when she moved away from the window he saw that she was completely naked again, going to sit on the wooden chair near the bed, not meeting his gaze as she slumped languidly in anticipation of her next visitor, and looking just like all the other women trapped here.

  14

  When Robert stepped back into the bustling, blue-lit bar, he found it transformed by what he had witnessed. The same sequinned band was still going through its faded repertoire, and at every table, laughing customers continued to be served by the pretty and obliging hostesses. Yet it was all a pretence, like the toy money in his pocket. Across the room, Forsyth and Harvey had both returned to sit with Davis, but none of them noticed Robert. Vine waved to him. ‘Join us now.’ Vine’s students were intently discussing some calculations scribbled on a napkin; Robert sat down beside the professor, and with a fatherly smile, Vine filled a spare wine glass then topped up his own. ‘A lot better than the mulled stuff earlier.’ He raised his glass to clink a toast. ‘Here’s to a successful mission.’